bush inherited a surplus and left with a massive deficit. didn't monitor the financial system and so on. the mostç important point is david's right about, which is there's no such thing as a presidential referendum election. i've covered ten of these and they've all been choices. why? because these two candidates live in everybody's living rooms. people make a judgment about their character -- >> reagan was partially positive, just anti -- >> oh that became a choice election after reagan appeared in that one debate against carter and people said, hey, he isn't so bad. i have a choice. >> one of the other players, besides the two candidates was bill clinton, the former president, don't think anybody made a better case of making the case for obama than bill clinton. at the convention a critical moment when he explained the arithmetic of what obama inherited. >> in tampa the republican ar gument against the president's re-election was pretty simple, pretty snappy. it went something like this. we left him a total mess. he hadn't cleaned it up